Matthew Elliot sits at the nexus of a group of “hard Brexit” campaigners closely linked to the UK’s climate science deniers and other anti-regulation think tanks. [6]

Elliott was the chief executive of Vote Leave, the official campaign group pushing for Brexit ahead of the 2016 EU Referendum. The group was responsible for the false and misleading campaign message: “Give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week”. [3], [7] He also founded the pro-Brexit organization, Business for Britain, from which Vote Leave emerged. [8]

Elliott also founded the civil liberties and privacy pressure group Big Brother Watch, as well as the Politics and Economics Research Trust (PERT), a charity focused on issues of public taxation. In 2017, he was forced to repay a £50,000 grant from PERT which he had used to produce an anti-EU report, following an investigation by the Charity Commission. [13], [14]

Elliott was also a partner at technology firm Awareness Analytics Partners (A2P) who describe themselves as “experts in understanding and utilizing influence, enhancing online messaging and delivering groundbreaking social media advertising results.” A2P says: “We map the networks of your most engaged audience members and then micro-target your ads to the people most likely to take your desired action.” The firm says it has a database of 115 million social profiles which it uses to identify “networks and people” who share particular attitudes and attributes. [17]

Awareness Analytics Partners, through its founding partner Sean Noble, has ties to the Koch-funded network of think tanks and charitable foundations promoting extreme free-market economics and climate science denial. A 2014 investigation by ProPublica found that Noble had been employed as a consultant by the Koch brothers to distribute political donations to conservative causes in the 2010 and 2012 US elections. [17], [33]

Stance on Climate Change

Elliott has criticised government interventions to tackle climate change and protect the environment. Combined with his Eurosceptic views, he has accused the EU of using climate change as an opportunity for a “power-grab,” thereby overstepping its authority in setting environmental regulations. [18]

“You could say our time has come […] We need to learn from our European colleagues and the Tea Party movement in the US […] It will be fascinating to see whether it will transfer to the UK. Will there be the same sort of uprising?” [22]

2009

In his 2009 bookThe Great European Rip-off: How the Corrupt, Wasteful EU is Taking Control of Our Lives, co-authored with David Craig, Elliott wrote: [18]

“The prominence given by politicians to the threat of global warming has allowed the [European] Commission to make a huge power-grab.

“There seemed to be no limit to the price our masters were willing for the rest of us to pay so they could save the planet from our shameful energy profligacy.” [18]

“I am not convinced that higher taxes are the answer. For example, something like the climate change levy, I have a concern in the way that it has impacted companies in the north of England. It has driven manufacturing jobs overseas to other countries that aren’t as stringent as we are in terms of cutting back CO2 emissions. I think the stick approach isn’t the right approach. I think we should look more at the cash approach, look to giving tax incentives to encourage companies to act in more green ways.” [23]

Key Deeds

October 2017

Prime Minister Theresa May was reported to be lining up Elliott for a senior government position to lead the overhaul of the Conservative Party “in a move that would bolster the hard Brexit-backing Tory wing,” The Independent wrote. [24]

Former energy and climate secretary Ed Davey wrote a letter to Elliott, then the head of the Vote Leave campaign. In the letter, Davey said the group will be guilty of attempting to take the UK “to the fringes of the international community” unless it distances itself from UKIP and the former chancellor Nigel Lawson. [26]

November 2010

The U.S. Tea Party and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, under Elliott’s leadership, held a joint event in London to “galvanise anti-government sentiment,” The Telegraph reported. At the time, Elliott praised the movement. [9]

2009

Elliott co-authored a book with David Haig entitled The Great European Rip-off: How the Corrupt, Wasteful EU is Taking Control of Our Lives in which he was critical of the EU's push for climate regulation. [18]

June 2007

In a blogpost atConservative Home, Matthew Elliott wrote that he was currently in the United States to learn more about a campaign by Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform “to commit candidates for federal and state office to oppose all tax increases.” [27]

Elliott added:

“Green taxes are not taxes on ‘bads’ as they are sold by political parties and the media. The amount of money raised by fuel duty alone is, even under very ‘green’ assumptions, enough to cover the externalities of Britain’s entire CO2 emissions. Green taxes are revenue raising measures designed to extract more money from ordinary families and British businesses which, as you rightly say, affect the poor more. In regional terms the North is hit incredibly hard by the Climate Change Levy. I’d love to give you some more details and statistics on this issue but they are going to be in a research paper we’ll be releasing soon.” [27]

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE